The Difference in These 2 Conservatives Is Radical : Profiles: Reps. Rohrabacher and Cox come from the same political mold, but their styles are worlds apart.

Walk into the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, self-proclaimed rock ‘n’ roll Republican, and you enter a monument to the ambiguity of politics in post-modern California.

A bust of John Wayne sits atop a television. A guitar rests comfortably in a corner. The desk is awash in papers and books, one entitled “Bullseye Iraq.” One wall is adorned with a large poster of a waterlogged Rohrabacher brandishing a Boogie Board at Seal Beach.

One of Orange County’s two freshman members of Congress, Rohrabacher, 43, fires up the office stereo to play his latest CD--a compilation of beach hits from the ‘60s. As “Deadman’s Curve,” Jan and Dean’s saga of death on the highway, booms out over the speakers, Rohrabacher pauses and grins: “That’s in my district.”

A building away, fellow Republican Rep. Christopher Cox, 38, Orange County’s other first-term congressman, has been working in his shirt sleeves. But he excuses himself to don a neatly pressed gray suit coat before welcoming a visitor into his office.

Four daily newspapers are carefully laid out on a gleaming side table, each neatly set atop the next. A map of the world fills one wall, a globe stands nearby. Among the books in Cox’s brimming bookcase is one by a friend at the American Enterprise Institute. It bears the sober title: “Foreign Aid and American Purpose.”

In the two years since they arrived in Washington, the two Orange County lawmakers have become the odd couple of the Southern California congressional delegation. But each in his own way has made a significant mark on Washington and set himself apart from the rank and file of congressional newcomers.

“I’ve never seen two freshmen from any county, let alone any state, hit the ground running at a higher speed,” said Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), a fellow conservative.

Rohrabacher, who sports a beard and is partial to rumpled suits, became a lightning rod on volatile issues. He earned a reputation for flamboyance--some critics have called it demagoguery--with his attacks on purportedly obscene or sacrilegious artwork financed by the National Endowment for the Arts.

More recently, Rohrabacher’s strong support for tough drug laws, and drug testing for congressional employees, led former friends in the libertarian movement to publicly accuse him of drug use as a young man. He has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.

While Rohrabacher snagged the lion’s share of publicity, both good and bad, Cox labored on less explosive--and some say more significant--issues, including budget reform, gridlock reduction and foreign aid. In the process, he has earned nods as one of the most intelligent young members of Congress.

Although some are uncomfortable with his button-down style, and others accuse him of arrogance, Cox has won plaudits as a legislator who can get things done, both for Orange County and the nation. Rohrabacher’s legislative victories have been more elusive.

When Cox and Rohrabacher landed on Capitol Hill in January, 1989, the distinctions between them were far less apparent. Local wags dubbed the new Orange County lawmakers the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the New Right.

Both were young men fresh from apprenticeships in the Ronald Reagan White House. Rohrabacher worked there for seven years as a speech writer, Cox for two as senior associate White House counsel. Both came from behind to win tough Republican primary victories, in which their chief opponents were tainted with scandal. Both turned to their former White House colleague, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, for help with political fund raising. And both seemed to share the same brand of conservative politics--old-fashioned Republican fiscal restraint spiced with a dash of Orange County libertarianism.

But as the 101st Congress unfolded, their differences came into sharp focus.

“Chris and I are different, but I think we appreciate and enjoy our differences,” Rohrabacher said. “We are very close friends.”

“I think the differences are pretty obvious,” Cox explained. “I wear neckties a lot more often.”

The superficial contrast extends to issues of substance.

While Cox and Rohrabacher share the same broadly conservative world view, they disagree, for example, about oil drilling off the coast of California. Cox, whose 40th Congressional District includes the central Orange County coast, strongly opposes it. Rohrabacher, who has referred to the lights that shine from offshore rigs as “beautiful,” favors offshore drilling, if affected communities sign off on the project. Rohrabacher also represents a coastal district, the 42nd, which extends south from Torrance through Huntington Beach.

On another front, Rohrabacher has proposed withdrawing federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, arguing that the agency’s $175-million budget is an unaffordable luxury in a time of fiscal constraint. Cox believes that the federal government should support the arts, but through a program of tax incentives that would leave to individual taxpayers the decision about what kind of art they will subsidize.

Personally, Rohrabacher appears loose and engaging. Cox seems more serious and controlled.

One Orange County businessman familiar with both representatives said of Cox, “He’s the quintessential attorney, and Rohrabacher is kind of the romantic artist, the writer, the musician, almost bohemian.”

Cox, the businessman said, “works very hard, he’s tenacious as an advocate. He’s smart, he’s well organized . . . he bites off big chunks and he’s not afraid of taking on big ideas and big people.

“But which guy would you want to go out and drink beer with on the beach? (Cox) wouldn’t take off his tie or his wingtips. And what he’d want to talk to you about is fiscal policy.”

In fact, Cox has spent much of his first term doing just that. After the 102nd Congress convenes in January, Cox plans to introduce a major budget reform bill, legislation he has been working on since his days in the White House counsel’s office.

The Cox bill would more heavily involve the President in the earliest stages of the budget process, bar consideration of legislation authorizing spending or appropriating money until the entire budget is approved, and require a vote of two-thirds of the members of Congress to bypass budget deadlines.

“I think it would be a real reform,” he said.

While budget reform is still on the horizon, Cox already can claim a significant foreign policy victory in his first term. He authored legislation, ultimately enacted, that creates a mechanism for the investment of private American capital in business enterprises in Hungary and Poland, not a mean achievement for a freshman member of the minority party. Cox also is pushing a bill that would shift allocation of money from the federal highway trust fund to those areas, such as Orange County, hardest hit by gridlock.

Congressional aides familiar with Cox’s work give him high marks for drive, determination and intelligence. But the same aides said that Cox’s brains--he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and received simultaneous law and MBA degrees from Harvard in 1977--also work against him.

“He may be a very fine lawyer and have a lot of expertise,” one aide said, “but he tends to talk down to people, and that irritates some of the more senior members” of Cox’s two committees--Government Operations, and Public Works and Transportation. “He is not a good listener,” said another person familiar with Cox.

At home, however, local officials said Cox has listened to their problems and done a good job of looking out for Orange County.

“I deal with a lot of legislators,” Orange County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider said of Cox, “and this guy is a breath of fresh air. . . . The guy is committed to do a good, thorough job. He is a guy who really helps us out a lot. We need more Chris Cox types.”

Specifically, Cox successfully took on the Department of the Army when the Corps of Engineers announced plans to begin charging a substantial fee, over and above its actual costs, for storing water behind the Prado Dam for later use by the Orange County Water District.

He also authored legislation that has effectively precluded the use of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro for commercial airline flights, to the delight of county officials. And he was instrumental in helping secure the federal right of way needed to extend Alicia Parkway in Laguna Niguel.

Rohrabacher, on the other hand, has not played as central a role in Orange County affairs, Schneider said. But Schneider noted that half of Rohrabacher’s district lies in Los Angeles County. There, Rohrabacher has been working to hang on to the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, which the Pentagon has threatened to close, and the battleship Missouri. Legislators from Hawaii have been trying to move the home port of the World War II-era battleship from Long Beach to Pearl Harbor.

Rohrabacher lost his most heavily publicized legislative fight when the House decisively rejected attempts to cut the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts and restrict the content of the art it funds. But the congressman said his most public battle was not the most significant of his first term.

“I’m doing things that are very important for my district,” Rohrabacher said, “but still consistent with what’s good for America. I think the most important thing I’ve been involved in . . . which has gotten very little press coverage, is what I’ve been doing on the National Aerospace Plane.”

NASP, as it is known in government-speak, is a space vehicle that would be able to take off and land like an airplane, yet fly into orbit like the Space Shuttle. Rohrabacher, who serves on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has been fighting, so far successfully, to keep the financially vulnerable program alive. Aides on the science committee credit him as a key player in that effort.

Rohrabacher said he believes that the NASP project would keep the nation at the forefront of space and high-technology. It would also benefit the 42nd District. The consortium that is working under a government contract to develop the spacecraft currently has its headquarters at the Rockwell plant in Seal Beach.

“I’ve been working on this day and night, aggressively pushing this project so that 10 years from now, our aerospace industry in Southern California and the United States of America will be the No. 1 aerospace industry in the world,” he said.

On a broader front, Rohrabacher said he is planning legislation that will encourage businesses to develop employee stock ownership plans.

Congressional aides fault Rohrabacher on two fronts.

One who has seen Rohrabacher in action said the congressman on occasion has not spent enough time doing his homework on key issues, including the NEA. Rohrabacher was ill-prepared last spring when he testified before a congressional panel examing the NEA issue and stumbled badly as a result, the aide said.

Rohrabacher acknowledged that his performance at the hearing was substandard but said it was not because he did not take the issue seriously.

“That was a bad performance on my part, but it was caused by a couple of things,” he said. “I literally had just run down the hall from testifying about the Santa Ana River (flood control) project. . . I can tell you I had a really good performance (there).”

Another aide said the notoriety associated with Rohrabacher’s battle with the NEA may hurt his credibility with other members who were turned off by his shrill attacks on the agency. However, the aide added, it is still too early to gauge that effect.

“If he’ll back off that, now that Jesse (Helms, another strong NEA opponent) is back in the Senate, I think Dana could turn that around,” the aide said. “Dana is a bright guy, but he can be an ideologue.”

In the end, the characteristic that may most fully distinguish Rohrabacher and Cox is political ambition. A half-dozen of the lobbyists, business people, congressional aides and local government officials interviewed for this story said they have little doubt that Cox already is weighing a run at higher office.

“Chris could be President of the United States someday,” Rohrabacher said. But the lawmaker said his ambitions beyond serving in Congress are of a different variety.

“I aspire to being a screenwriter and being back on the beach, and drinking margaritas . . . ,” Rohrabacher said.

“I can honestly tell you, my goal (is) to try to do my very best job here for perhaps 10 years, God willing and the voters willing, and then go back to California and live somewhere near the beach and be a writer and surf.”